1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to computer systems. More particularly, it is directed to the protection of electronic content within a computing environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
To combat unauthorized consumption of content, some content owners have adopted an approach to protecting their content known as digital rights management (“DRM”), which may include various techniques for limiting access of electronic content to authorized individuals and/or enforcing other restrictions on the use of such content. Typically, clear content that is to be protected by DRM is typically encoded and packaged into an encrypted form. At packaging time, the packaging unit responsible for packaging content may utilize various types of encryption algorithms for encrypting content. In some cases, these encryption algorithms may encrypt content based on a cryptographic key, which may be selected or generated in a random fashion. At some point, the encrypted content may be provided to an electronic device associated with a content consumer. For instance, the consumer may pay a one-time fee or a recurring subscription fee to access the content electronically. To view the content in unencrypted form on the consumer's electronic device, the device may be required to obtain a respective content license that includes the correct cryptographic key for decrypting the content.
In some cases, decryption schemes and/or content formats may vary across consumer devices or platforms. These differences may be accommodated at packaging time. For instance multiple different encryption and formatting schemes may be applied to clear content to generate multiple different content versions that are compatible with different consumer devices or platforms.